Some Basic Flint
Knapping Techniques

Brian Merrill
demonstrating some basic flint knapping techniques
at the Wildwood Trackers
meeting in June 2004

First of all, PLEASE TAKE NOTE of a couple of very
important SAFETY ITEMS that are highlighted in the photo below:

Safety Glasses: Flint knapping causes rock or glass fragments
to fly off in unforeseen directions. If one hits your eye, you could be
blinded.

Bucket to catch rock and glass fragments.

Onlookers keep your distance: There's no one sitting really
close to the flint knapper. Again, stray rock or glass fragments may fly
off unexpectedly and hit bystanders.

Here is a well-equipped flint knapping kit. From left to
right: A pad for pressure flaking, 3 percussion "whackers", a pressure
flaking tool, a chunk of a grinding stone, which has various uses, and
the all-important asfety glasses.

A basic pressure-flaking tool.
It's a large dowel with a piece of round copper stuck in the
end.

Pressure flaking is the act of "pressing" (removing) thin flakes off
from a piece of stone or glass. It is usually used in making the
fine sharp edge of an arrowhead and other similar things. It
allows a very fine degree of control over the flintknapping
process, much more so than whacking your work with a stone,
which is the stereotypical flintknapping activity.

Pressure flaking:

This is the
proper way to hold your "stone" that you're working on, against
the pad in your left hand (if you're right-handed), and the
pressure flaker in the other hand.

In this photo Brian is about to press a flake off his "stone"
using the tip of the pressure flaking tool.

In this demonstration Brian is
using the bottom of a glass bottle to practice with, as flint is
hard to come by. Glass acts in much the same way as flint and
obsidian, and is therefore excellent to practice flintknapping.

Here you can see where the
"flakes" have been pressed off from the piece of glass, using
the pressure flaking tool.